The Japanese mom and Italian dad of a 2-year-old with a rare kind of leukemia have launched a crowdfunding campaign to find a special donor matching the genetic makeup of their kid.
Flaminia Pugliese has been getting treatment in Nanbu Children's Hospital in Okinawa, Japan, since January 14 of this year. The young girl was diagnosed with a rare form of acute myeloid leukemia M7, also known as acute megakaryoblastic leukemia (AMKL).
The American Cancer Society (ACS) estimates that there will be about 60,650 new cases of leukemia diagnosed this year. Of those cases, 20,050 will be acute myeloid leukemia, mostly in adults. According to the ACS, it accounts for only about 1 percent of all cancers.
Flaminia is looking for a bone marrow donor
Flaminia has received several chemotherapy courses, but she is now in need of a bone marrow transplant. Her father, Thomas Pugliese, is Italian and her mother, Naraha Pugliese, is Japanese, meaning that Flaminia's donor needs similar genetics.
Flaminia's parents could not find a suitable donor for their daughter in Japan, so they are now appealing for international help, which will cost them around £40,000 ($46,764). The couple has launched a crowdfunding campaign to help with their child's treatment with a target amount of £18,500 ($21,628). That is only around half the funds needed, though, as doctors wrongly estimated the cost of the treatment.
She has been through various stages of chemotherapy so far to destroy cancerous and non-cancerous cells in her bone marrow. The little girl is now receiving consolidation therapy to destroy the remaining cancer cells, according to WalesOnline.
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Flaminia in a race against time to survive leukemia
According to dad Thomas, their first verdict was already terrible for them because doctors told them she had only a 60 percent chance of survival in five years. He added that the treatment for his daughter would have been five stages of chemotherapy, which are called two stages of attack therapy, wherein the medicine basically destroyed all the bad and good cells in her bone marrow.
Thomas said that after that treatment, his daughter would have to go through three other stages of chemotherapy called consolidation therapy for a total of six months. She started treatment at the end of January with the first chemotherapy stage, and the medicines worked pretty well on her.
However, the young girl's immune system was severely compromised while in the hospital, as she contracted various infections during her stay there. She suffered an unknown infection in her jaw's parotid glands after being exposed to a room full of other infant patients, according to Newsweek.
Thomas said his daughter was not allowed a private room, so she was always in a big room with other kids and adults. She had her first infection in her parotid region, which affected her jaw's left side area.
